Jaager

The US Ex.Ex. had another use for a gun in a launch. They made heavy use of large (35 foot) launches for mapping. What maps available of the invasion of Tarawa were from this expedition. A gun was at a known position. A distant launch, doing soundings would determine its distance from the fixed one by measuring the time between the gun flash and the time it took for the boom to reach them.

Ed, Where is it being used? If it is POB and filling cracks in a first layer of hull planking, my question is: Why bother? The outer layer of planking will cover the gaps anyway. If it is to flesh out minor hollows in the planking run, then it should as well as it needs to. If there are serious hollows, better it would be to use thin strips of wood, PVA bonded at the hollows and sand these scabs into a smooth run. For places where a clear finished wood is on display, wood flour of the same species mixed with white PVA usually does a fix that takes effort to notice.

I agree, cheap and effective. I wonder about heat and thin wall plastic, I wonder how a thick wall cardboard mailing tube would do? The kind that we get mail order plans rolled up in? Alternate way. Your are not bending a full size plank so steam may be more than is necessary, as well as taking longer, needing time to dry and have the bend firmed up, and leaving a surface on the wood ( swollen fibers/raised grain ) that will need dressing. Heat alone will bend model thickness wood. It will not affect the surface like water does - provided it is not hot enough to char. When the wood gets hot enough to start to bend around the heated surface, the bend can be shaped using fingers and the new shape is set almost instantly. Dry heat application: the old Aeropiccola plank benders are no longer cheap, and I did not see any large diameter replacement tips for economy soldering irons, but as others have recomended here, a basic curling iron has a large enough barrel and I imagine a temp limit that is a lot lower than a soldering iron. It may take bit bit longer to transfer enough heat, but you should be able to get fingers on the bend to shape it more quickly. A dimmer switch may provide even more heat control.

It helps very much, thank you. Allan, That is exactly the information that I needed. The 13" I have from the Establishments. The 21" I have from the Establishments. It is 15" at the top of the wale. {There are more than one 18th century models of this ship. All feature the main wale as being 3 strakes. The model that you show has the middle one as being thinner than the other two. Most or all of the others have 3 three strakes as being the same thickness and all are black. I have about decided to go with the majority and have 3 equal strakes - even though it means 50% more hook and butt.} I do not know where the 19 " came from, but with it being 8" at the bottom of the figurehead, it tells me that the taper starts at the knight-head (- at the top). All in all, a lot of tricky planing. I may make up the whole stem from a single board and practice planing on it or them until I feel comfortable. It would not be fun to mess up a complex of scarphed pieces that will be tricky to do to begin with. The keel is 15" square, but tapers to 10.5" at the sternpost and 13" at the forefoot. What is not said is where the reduction starts. The keel was 5 pieces. My plan is to divide the length of the keel by 5. Have a separate piece for the stern assembly that is 1/5 long and start the aft taper in it. Have another equal 1/5 piece at the bow and start the taper foreward in it. The other 3/5 as a single piece. I verified what I thought in Antscherl, the keel scarphs are a vertical line as seen from the side. A current build showing the scarph as a lazy "Z" as seen from the side gave me pause for a minute. I would think that the hogging force make a side lazy "Z" scarph vulnerable to separation?

It is HMS Centurion 1732 1:60 scale a 60 gun fourth rate. A really attractive ship. The as launched version. I came across it in Longitude. I had no idea that it was so famous until I started researching it for a build. Before this, I had never paid any attention to 60 gun warships. They are a sweet spot for size and elegance. I have no interest in doing the beat up version after its circumnavigation My inner cynic sees it accomplishing two major achievements with that mission. One it saved the crown a lot of money by killing off all of the old retired marines in governnent rest homes. Two, starting a rip roaring inflation by delivering the hijacked Spanish treasure in the annul; Manila to the crown. Treasure that the Spanish had stolen from Asians.

I have the stock thickness at the knighthead, hawse level, and forefoot. It tapers, which will be a joy to shape. My question is: Is it the same thickness along its whole depth? Does it knife edge taper to the edge where it meets the water? If it does, does it loose about half of its thickness? If it tapers forward, does it stop at the LWL? Does the wide part under the head rails on to the figurehead also taper. It would please me if it is slab sided all the way. It would look sleeker if it had a knife-like entry. Was this all a 19th century obsession with speed characteristic?

The old General version had an end that was a tad larger, smoother edges and had less resistance to rotation. The bean counters who made the design less expensive to manufacture were morons.

Micro-Mark is having a significant sale right now.. I am a 'use what works' in behavior, so tool theory is not my focus. My favorite is an old version of 21105. It was by General and made before the Wharton School types took over manufacturing and lowered the quality of the materials and workmanship to crap levels. And that is universal, not just General or what passes for it today. The quality of what you pick is a gamble from a gatherer and vendor like Micro-Mark. There is a variety of pin vises there. If a particular manufacturer has resisted the trend and stuck with quality over economy, in most cases it will be worth the extra - IF you intend to stick with this for the long term. Most economy tools are aimed at tyros and dilettantes. 60531 Multitool is something that looks good, and may be a good fit for plastic or photo etch but for wooden sail - for me it is a tool looking for a job. 64216 Rogers drill stand is very handy - again if you are going to stick with this. The same conditions apply to these two drill gauges: 10123 1-60 14521 61-80 They help with identifying stray drill bits and will work as a draw plate for Bamboo dowels (trunnels). But, at the small sizes, the Byrnes draw plate is at least 10 times better. The gradations are slight enough that a two finger grip is enough to pull a sliver of Bamboo skewer thru it. For any other of the many seductive tools, sale or no sale, it is best to wait until a task comes up that is better done with a particular tool. Buy it when you need it. Buying tools on spec will gain you a supply of tools that take up space and gather dust and never see use. Alas, this is advice that I seldom follow, so I have storage boxes with drawers almost never opened.

When I obtained ship's boats plans in the National Archives - from the no longer Maryland Silver Co. There were plans for mounting a howitzer at the bow of a launch. This could be a way for a shore party to extend the use of a howitzer farther inland. But a single wheel, a heavy load on sand? Not me.

Michael, I do not see this at all the way that you do. There may have been a few exceptions - perhaps fish holds and such, but in general western wooden vessels did not have bulkheads. Large Chinese sailing vessels had bulkheads. While not all vessels were framed using bends - a bend is a pair of frames and a strong structure - the timbers of one overlapped the butt join of two of its partner.s timbers. - a station IS the mid-line of a bend. As such, it provides the shape not one, but two frames. If it was all single frames, the station would be one face or the other of a frame. (#) The station was the primary part of a plan, enlarged on a mold loft floor and used to shape the timber patterns. Richard Endsor describes these station patterns having sirmarks that allowed these same patterns to be used the shape the frames between and up to the next station. POB uses molds. The entire method is an artiface. The molds can go anywhere, The method is easier to do if an already existing station pattern is fixed to mold stock and shaped to make a mold. For some reason, early Italian kit mfg termed their molds as "bulkheads". Perhaps the writer of the instructions was ex navy. In any case no end of misunderstanding has followed. The station pattern is placed on the mid-line side of the mold. As for the deck, the solid line with the deck plank hash lines above it is the top of the beam. Or where the top would be if there was a beam at a station. Beams followed their own location rules - ignoring station locations. I am guessing that Boudriot added the beam shape to his station plans so that should a molder build the vessel using POB, the mold made using each could have a pseudo-deck beam as part of the mold and avoid modeling actual beams. The profile plans provides beam location, the height at the crown of the deck and intermittent marks showing the underside of the deck at the side. What the solid or dotted lines below the beam camber are intended to show is not obvious to me. The bevel of a deck goes up, not down. The thickness of a mold is arbitrary and entirely up to the builder. (#) With traditional POF where a bend is glued up and a pattern applied for shaping, A station is of no use and they tend to ignored.

Sand off the paint that is not right. Buy a can of shellac (clear or garnet) and one of shellac thinner (likely ethanol). Make a mixture of thinner and shellac 1:1. Use a piece of an old T-shirt to pad it on - just wet no build up. When dry, dress it with a Scotch Brite pad and tack rag it. Give a thought to doing another coat of full strength shellac. A better base for follow-on paint would be difficult to find. It dries fairly quickly and is not messy.

Vaddoc, There is Maple and then there is Maple. I am guessing that you can source Sycamore Maple - which is J-1000 and Soft Maple (awful stuff) J-700. Hard Maple is J-1450 but Beech is also J-1450 which makes it pointless for you to pay the extra for Hard Maple. Over here, it is the opposite. Hard Maple is reasonable in cost and available in quantity, but Beech is a premium cost and requires effort of find. Hard Maple also has what may be a distinct characteristic: a variety of grain presentation. Fiddleback, flame, birdseye, fleck, clear - all can be had from the same log. I depends on where along the log, and the orientation of the grain where the slice is taken. For frame timbers, getting pieces with compass grain is all but impossible, so a timber at the turn of the bilge gets into end grain and the color gets darker. Mike, A literal reply to your question would make this a sort of contest with one winner. There is no "best" wood for exterior planking. There are excellent species. Many of them. There are good enough species, depending on how finished. Paint - stain (bad) - dye - natural (paint with wood). The species supplied with mass market kits all look to me as being not suitable, looked at objectively: inappropriate. They are however low cost, have a reliable supplier and are available in quantity and are soft enough not to tax the edges of their cutting tools. The colors are appealing to those whose prior exposure to wood is furniture. You just have it ignore the course grain, open pores, rolling fibers. and brittle tendency. ( The boutique kit makers, most based here, tend to use excellent wood for their kits. )

Christian, Station intervals are not always constant. My current subject is an NMM plan. The majority of the stations are at 3 bend intervals, but the last one at either end are 2 bend intervals and the dead-flat has a skip to get in step for floor placement by having 2 bends and a single frame. HIC copied a lot of original plans as drawn and Falmouth has three 8 bend intervals in the middle, then it goes to 4 bend ans a 3 bend at each end. Stag Hound is majority 4 bend but goes to 2 bend at the ends. ANCRE plans tend to be constant interval and it can make dealing with the ends interesting when the bevel becomes significant and the reference points are a bit sparse considering the difference.

Hmmm, I wonder why he would see it this why? The old guys had to develop a multitude of unique curves and make wooden patterns that defined each one for the frames. There were many fewer deck beams per deck, Making an individual camber pattern for each one would have been no problem. In order to get beams that matched the specifications on the profile plan, i.e. a constant difference in height at the side and at its crown for each beam, a unique curve for each is necessary. As you have shown, a constant camber produces sheer curves for the two locations that converge. Using a CAD program can perhaps get a user into entertaining aspects of design - that is the primary purpose of that software after all. For historical wooden ships, the function is to replicate as precisely as is practical. There is no design involved. Perhaps using a constant camber may have worked, but available evidence suggests that it did not. Doing it would have been quicker and less expensive, so I suspect it was tried. Methods used were a craft secret, and not a university degree learned skill. It was probably tried more than once. Having to redo a deck and reshape the beams probably a profound negative lesson for each master shipwright who tried it.

Tony, You can do larger if you use legal paper 8.5 x 14. The price difference is out of proportion, but I get more timber patterns on a page and thus fewer pages to lacquer coat.

Tony, Actually, there is a Body Plan of sorts. Plan 1 part C is the Body plan with each station cross section in a separate box. And if you look - Station 1 and station 11 are also there. A bonus is that Boudriot has done all the planning and plotting for you for the bow and stern. Cut the pieces using his patterns and assemble. Would that NMM plans had this feature! Each has a bevel - for the frame on the side away from the mid-line. This means that if you wish to do the frame lofting using tradition methods, the outside shape of 9 frames has already been done. I think the horizontal line at the bottom is the bottom of the rabbet. This is easier done using a raster based graphics program. Scan, adjust for scanner scale artifact. Select the background and CUT. There is now a transparent layer with just the lines on it. Make a Base grid. baseline / vertical midline / vertical buttock line locations / horizontal WL locations. With this behind each station cross section you can get the desired points. If you duplicate the base and duplicate a station cross section pair the two then collapse to a merged layer - you can use the rectangle select tool to get each data point as its own layer - move it where needed - rotate it if it is needed for a 90 degree different perspective. This removes the human measuring error when setting points to plot. One factor about raster based graphics - these programs do not do smooth curves. Depending on how many points are used to draw a curve, at some magnification it will look faceted - saw tooth - This is not what is best for laser cutter plot, but if you go from plan to pattern to cutting wood, there is no way that you could replicate a micro facet effect on actual wood when sanding or planning to shape. GIMP is free, Photo shop is monthly rental, PaintShop Pro is not expensive, Painter is expensive.

Some ANCRE plans are a bit inconsistent as to which line is used as the baseline from sheet to sheet. All of the lines are where they should be. You must choose which of the lines will be your baseline. You use that same line for every sheet and ignore the view selected baseline if it is different from your choice. Unless the hull has drag, my favorite is the top of the rabbet. Some plans have the frames go down to the bottom of the rabbet. I would rather cut the rabbet into the top of the keel. If the rabbet is part of the frame, it gets fairly thin and is sort of like the frame is balancing on a point. Also, rather than cut a notch in the keel for the floor timber, add the chock on top of the keel. For me, the worst part of plotting each frame is drawing the curve. Three points define a curve. You can get a curve for a frame by connecting three or more plotted points. But that curve is unique. It may or may not be related to its brother curves on the frames before and after it Getting a fair hull is challenge enough when the curves are related.

The little version on this would fit what were essentially hypodermic needles - all metal and not stainless steel as a tip for a micro flame. I think the ones I have are ~12 G. Would one of those push fit over one of your tips? If that worked, it would get you more use from even a low grade tip. We used 12 G to make up IV solutions in the sterile hood. I am not sure - it has been a long time, but I think they were all metal. Heat transfer might make using needles with a plastic hub an interesting experience.

What PietFriet said, but it should probably be bookbinders pH neutral version of PVA. It is white, dries clear, and does not potentially degrade natural fibers that are vulnerable to acid.

Phil, My apology for the confusion in definition of "camber". The original definition as I understood it turns out to be the correct one - the transverse or cross section curve from side to side. I have always understood sheer as applying to a profile line from bow to stern. But from HIC's plans where he names a continuous line at the side of the ship going from bow to stern as "sheer". The lines that define center of a deck from bow to stern and underside of deck at side from bow to stern - may not have a generally accepted name. They are usually present on most of the plans that I work with. I am at present hacking away at HMS Centurion 1732. These lines are present for all of the decks. They are also parallel on every deck, except on the two lower full decks where beginning maybe 10 feet from the rabbet of the stem, they start to converge. I have recently seen plans where close to the hawse holes, some ships had this deck with a sharp dip down. I see the utility of isolating water coming in with hemp anchor lines in a forward well for runoff there. If you work the geometry, using the same curve for every beam cannot produce this result. Up to 1860, most every ship seems to follow this pattern. When iron and steel became dominant, what you describe maybe became the norm. I see that world undergoing at major change around 1860. That is why I stop at 1860. Perhaps wood and steel have different requirements for economical deck fabrication? The deck camber may also have been parabolic before 1860 and an arc after. I think that the sort of work done on deck may have been very different on either side of the tech inflection date. I think this is an a situation of comparing apples and oranges. As an aside, I propose that except for small individual yards, the discipline and methods of wooden shipbuilding gained over several hundred years was lost as the older generation aged out and did not pass it on. The books that reflect the methods used during the brief resurgence in large wooden hulls around 1900 - 1914-1918 - appear to me to be a translation of steel methods to wood.

Terry, No hijack has occurred. Seminars will drift a bit and as long as it stays reasonably close to the subject, it is what is supposed to happen. A wide search light is my preference. I doubt that I am the only one who could use help with this subject. Yes. I have gotten the answer that I was seeking. I just excavated my Acu-Arc. The Acu-Arc is essentially a sliding batten. The plastic is still plastic and the springs still pull. So doing each beam as a unique individual will be less painful than having to draw a lot of geometric constructs and connecting the dots for each beam. I have the 14 inch one and I am certain that I did not pay anything like $60 for it. But I bought it 40 years ago. You might reconsider building a physical model instead of a virtual one. It is a different sort of reward. Dean

Terry, Being sort of tongue in cheek, given the situation involving your subject, I would probably pretend that my customer was rich and valued form over substance. I would do the ideal version of the vessel - how it would have looked if the designer and builder had possessed superior skills.

Terry, I suspect that when discussing 1650-1860 warship construction, there are details and practices that are very different from 1900 +/- 50 merchant. The strength and physics of wood would be the same, so necessary scantlings in proportion to vessel size would be reasonably close. I also have ASA 1870, 1885, 1903 and I use them for 19th century vessels when Meade is mute on the part in question. (My interest ends at 1860.) The camber vs sheer vs round-up is a point of confusion. I have slowly come around to realizing that academically generated scientists and engineers with professional discipline, standards, and vocabulary is a late 19th century creature at best. The earlier data sources are generally the work of enthusiastic amateurs or individually trained professionals. There was no board of grey-beards and silver-backs who edited their work for errors or inconsistencies in nomenclature. I feel that being dogmatic, rigid, and self-sure about much of this is neither wise or supported by reality. I go by, does it match what existing plans and information is available? For the gaps, does it match known contemporary practice within reason and does it seem it fit its time? As far as deck beams, in order to fit what I see on plans, I will shape the curvature of each beam as an individual. To use the same curve for all and still match the plans as far as the crown would require that I shim the land at the clamp. By doing this, I would not be following the plan for where-is the underside of the deck at the side. My plans are 1732 not ~1900. I am going to have to soak a while about how I will deal with there being a bevel on the top where the slope of the profile line becomes significant. Batch production of deck beams is an idea that I will file in the specious folder. Dean

Hi Terry, I have always looked at stanchions as being a push fit or wedge fit element. Not as something already resisting really serious downward force. In a model, I tend to see them as optional because with my style, they would never be seen. Random thoughts: This would probably never work in a model. It would be like planking the hull without pre-bending the curve in the plank. But the forces involved would be much much more. In a multi-deck warship, doing beams thus way would make the decks a tightly tensioned spring. The effects of a projectile eliminating a stanchion: ... The beam alone would exert downward force, wanting to go horizontal. Adding on the weight of the guns, I do not think I have seen illustrations of stanchions large enough for this. Jacking up the middle would pull ends of a beam in. The joinery during the build would be interesting. If it is a tight fit before being jacked, placing wedges at the ends would fill the gap and help the stanchion, but there would be serious outward force on the frame it is mated with. If I am reading this correctly, some beams had bottom edges that were chords of the round up and not parallel to it. a lot easier to model. No jacking up with this. Smaller vessels only. For a large vessel, the timber thickness would possibly require a Redwood tree sized balk. I would think economy built merchantmen only. The trimming to sit on the clamp - it would need to be from the inner corner up. The outer corner up would affect the height of the crown. In the vessels with jacked up beams, the cross sectional curve is an arc. But each beam would have an arc for a different circle. OK. Someone here ( I think Bob Cleek) pointed out that camber is the curve of the deck seen in profile - i.e. from bow to stern. It is not the curve along the top of a beam as seen in a Body plan ( cross section ). To do this, each beam must have its own individual curve as seen in cross section. ? Dean

Mark, I do not know the practical difference between an ellipse and a parabola when it is a small segment of the curve that we are interested in. An arc has a constant slope. The slope between any two points on the curve is the same. For an actual deck, I think the slope increases as the end is approached. The middle section is sort of flat, but the rate of water runoff out increases as the waterway is approached. Chapelle has the curve as a parabola. (If you do not own Boatbuilding by Howad I. Chapelle, you may find it valuable if you did.) His method for drawing the curve is different from what I tried to describe above. Maybe the difference between an ellipse for a deck curve and a parabola is that the middle stays flat(er) farther out and drops off more sharply with an ellipse. By being in these weeds, I see that no matter which curve is chosen, the same pattern cannot be used for every beam - unless you wish the difference in height between the crown and the end to decrease as the stern and bow are approached. I just checked HMS Centurion's draught. The lines defining the difference in height for the crown and at the deck clamp are parallel all the way aft and in the fore up to the last station. The lines converge from there to the FP (rabbet at the stem.